Nation's Vinyl Rebellion Successfully Acquired By Target, Walmart, Amazon

In what economists are calling "the most predictable acquisition since the last one," America's grassroots vinyl rebellion has been successfully absorbed by Target, Walmart, and Amazon, with the counterculture movement now available for $34.99 plus free Prime shipping for orders over $35.

The revolution, which began as an organic rejection of corporate streaming services owned by three major conglomerates, is now a $1.2 billion industry owned by the same three major conglomerates, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which is also owned by those conglomerates.

"There's something authentic about purchasing mass-produced petroleum discs manufactured in plants running 24/7 to meet quarterly projections," said Carson Bispels, 24, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, the mandatory relocation destination for millennials seeking artistic credibility. "Every time I listen to my scratched Bob Marley record, I think of my dad."

His dad is 57, alive, quoted in this article, and reachable by phone.

The elder Bispels spent 30 years at QVC, the 3 AM television channel that exists specifically to create artificial urgency for products people don't need. He sold "genuine" cubic zirconia — laboratory-manufactured crystals marketed as diamond alternatives — and Thomas Kinkade prints, which are mass-produced "limited editions" of cottages that never existed, painted by a man who franchised his own brushstroke.

He now runs "Retroactv," a company selling authentic 1970s rock merchandise. The name is deliberately misspelled because "Retroactive" was already trademarked, meaning his authenticity company had to compromise its own name with intellectual property law before selling its first t-shirt.

The Facebook Amish: Coordinating Analog Through Algorithm

Meanwhile, 15,000 people have joined a Facebook group called "Random Acts of Cardness" to coordinate their rejection of impersonal digital communication — a name that sounds like Etsy developed a paramilitary wing.

The group is hosted on a platform that harvests every interaction for advertising profiles, algorithmically optimizes content for engagement, and was designed by engineers who specifically removed friction from communication. The irony was unavailable for comment, having been acquired by Meta in 2019.

Founder Megan Evans started the group at age 21, meaning she has never experienced adult life without the internet. She is a digital native cosplaying as an analog elder, using Zuckerberg's surveillance apparatus to coordinate resistance to Zuckerberg's surveillance apparatus.

"Anybody can send a text message," Evans explained, via a platform that sends notifications, tracks engagement, and serves targeted ads for Hallmark cards. "But sending a card is more intentional."

The cards recipients receive will be photographed and posted to Instagram — also owned by Meta — for validation likes.

The Hundred-Card Soldier

Billy-Jo Dieter, 48, sends more than 100 cards per month, commemorating birthdays, holidays, and "other milestones." At current postal rates, this represents $936 annually in postage alone, plus approximately $3,600 in cards, envelopes, and materials — a total investment of roughly $4,500 per year and 50 hours of labor.

She calls card-sending "a dying art."

It is dying because she is the only one doing it.

This is not cultural preservation; it is statistical outlier behavior being presented as a moral imperative. If 0.001% of the population does something obsessively, that thing is not "dying" — it was never mainstream in the first place.

The PlayStation Monks

In Silicon Valley, brothers Prabh, 22, and Divjeev Sohi, 19, drive manual transmission vehicles to San Jose State University, specifically noting they are "surrounded by Teslas." The Teslas are not incidental scenery. The Teslas are the point.

The brothers learned to drive stick from video games — digital simulation of analog experience — then purchased a 1994 Jeep Wrangler to perform authenticity in traffic.

The vehicle has no airbags, no antilock brakes, no stability control, and no crumple zones designed in the last three decades. "Being in the moment" is, medically speaking, what happens during traumatic accidents. They have purchased a steel coffin and called it a meditation cushion.

"You are more in the moment when you are driving a car with a stick," Divjeev explained. "Basically you are just there to drive."

Their father and grandfather drove manual because automatic transmissions were expensive luxury options poor people couldn't afford. Economic necessity has been rebranded as philosophy. Working-class pragmatism has become upper-middle-class identity performance.

The Living Eulogy

Perhaps no example better illustrates the movement than Carson Bispels, who treasures a scratched Bob Marley record because "every time I listen, I think of my dad."

Bob Marley died in 1981. Carson was born circa 2000. He has never sat with the artist. He cannot sit with the artist. The artist has been dead for 43 years.

Meanwhile, his father — who gave him the record, who is quoted in this very article, who exists in accessible physical reality — is a phone call away.

Carson has constructed a memorial practice for a living person. He communes with his father through a damaged petroleum disc rather than through his father. The crackle and pop of vinyl wear is preferred over the actual voice of his actual living dad.

"It feels like I'm sitting with the artist," Carson said, sitting alone in Nashville.

The Content Ouroboros

Pamela Paul, author of "100 Things We've Lost to the Internet," was cited as an analog authority throughout the original article. Her book is sold on Amazon, available on Kindle, promoted via Twitter, reviewed on Goodreads, and marketed through targeted digital advertising.

She is now teasing a sequel about analog's comeback. More content about rejecting content. Another book about having too many things. The lamentation has become a franchise. The mourning has become a revenue stream.

"A return to humanity," she said, describing her proposed book, "could turn out to be another book."

The return to humanity will cost $28.99 hardcover, available with free Prime shipping.

The Fortune Cookie

The original article ended with an advertisement for the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit — a conference exploring "how AI and humanity converge."

The summit is in Atlanta. May 19-20, 2026. Registration is online. Attendance costs corporate money.

An article about rejecting technology and embracing analog humanity is content marketing for a conference about artificial intelligence replacing human workers.

The executives who read the original article and felt warm feelings about vinyl records will fly to Atlanta to learn how to automate their workforces.

The leopard is not eating its face. The leopard is wearing its own face as a marketing costume.

At press time, 43 million units of rebellion were being pressed onto petroleum discs in factories running three shifts, ready for distribution through the same supply chains that deliver everything else, to be played on turntables purchased from Amazon by people who will photograph them for Instagram and caption them "disconnecting from the digital world."

The revolution will be monetized.

It already has been.